SOURCE: Delany, Paul. “Vivre Comme Chien et Chat.” London Review of Books 14, no. 16 (20 August 1992): 12.

In the following review, Delany contends that Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country presents several important insights but notes that “the case for Quebec nationalism needs to be answered more seriously and scrupulously than Richler cares to do.”

The population of Québec is about seven million, all of them minorities. The Jews, for whom Mordecai Richler makes his complaint (though not only for them), are outnumbered by 11 to one in the English-speaking community. The English are outnumbered five to one by the French, but the French are outnumbered by three to one in Canada as a whole. In North America, finally, the Americans have Canadians outnumbered by a factor of ten.

Québec is thus a place where everyone can feel that they have a legitimate grievance, and even the...